Performance prediction of an improved air-cooled steam condenser with deflector under strong wind

For an air-cooled steam condenser (ACSC), environmental wind can cause a large flow rate reduction in the axial fans mainly near the windward side of the air-cooled platform due to cross-flow effects, resulting in a heat transfer reduction. This leads to an increase of turbine back pressure, and occasional turbine trips occur under extremely gusty conditions. A new method is proposed in this paper to remove the strong wind effect by adding deflecting plates under the air-cooled platform, which contributes to forming a uniform air mass flow rate in the axial fans by leading enough cooling air to the fans in the upwind region. Numerical simulation is made of the thermal-flow characteristics and heat transfer performance of the improved ACSC with deflectors. A heat exchanger model is used for simulating the flow and heat transfer in the ACSC, in which the heat exchanger is simplified to a porous medium and all flow losses are taken into account by a viscous and an inertial loss coefficient. A fan model is used for reaching the flow condition at the heat exchanger inlet with the actual performance curves of the fan. It is found that the improved ACSC with deflector shows a significant enhancement in both the cooling air mass flow rate and the heat rejection rate compared with the conventional ACSC. The higher the wind speed is, the larger the heat transfer enhancement of the improved ACSC is. The effect of the plate inclination is also investigated, and the inclination angle of 45 degrees is found to be the optimum value for the arrangement of the deflector. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.